The present invention relates to a method for activation, deactivation and speech control of a number of electronic products, comprising the steps of activation of one of said products by emission of an activation command specific to said product and controlling performance and/or functionality of said product by speech commands.
When speech control of functionality and performance of electronic products such as consumer electronics like a TV set, stereo equipment and similar devices is used to control more than one electronic product in the same room the problem is encountered that the controlled products, when operating in parallel may disturb each others performance, because more than one product reacts on the same speech command intended for the control of one product only.
From EP-A-0 772 184 a speech based man-machine communication system is known, in which a unique speech control of more than one controllable device provided with speech synthesis function is obtained by providing each device with its own unique voice pattern. In order to limit the proliferation of the expensive hardware and software for speech recognition, a preferred architecture of the system is suggested, in which all the controlled devices are linked via a bus, so that all requests from the user are handled by a central authority equipped with speech recognition. Although a cost reduction may be obtained by this architecture, the additional costs of a bus connection linking the devices and a central speech recognition authority are significant.
A similar concept with a number of consumer electronic products interlinked by a bus network and controlled by a single speech recognition device is disclosed in EP-A-0 911 808.
In addition to the cost factor, these prior art solutions will seriously limit the freedom of the user in his selection and purchase of home electronics, since all the interlinked devices must operate under a common communication protocol.
Therefore, it is an object of the invention to provide a significantly simplified and less expensive method for speech control of several electronic products, which in addition provides the user with more freedom in the selection and purchase of such products.
According to the invention, the method as defined is characterized in that emission of the activation command specific to said one product is accompanied by emission of a deactivation code causing deactivation of any other of said number of electronic products.
Thereby, a number of speech controlled electronic products in the same room, which need not be interlinked by a bus system or otherwise be aware of one another can be controlled in a simple manner.
The activation command may by itself preferably be emitted as a speech command. In this case activation commands specific to each of the electronic products can comprise individual names assigned individually to the number of electronic products.
Alternatively, the activation command may be emitted by wireless transmission, e.g. in the form a specific activation signal from a remote control unit common to the number of electronic products. Activation may also be effected in a more traditional way by operation of an activation key or button on the electronic product to be activated
In a preferred implementation of the method the deactivation code is generic to all of said number of electronic products and is generated and emitted by any of the products in response to its identification of receipt of the activation command specific to that product.
In order to avoid use of a bus connection or other form of wiring to connect the electronic products the deactivation code may preferably be emitted either by wireless transmission, e.g. as a short sequence of beep tones with variable frequency, volume and/or duration or as a radio frequency code, or be transmitted as a data sequence via a home power cabling system supplying electric power to said number of electronic products.
For carrying out the method the invention further relates to an electronic device, which is individually assignable to any of said number of electronic products for communication with and control of activation means in said product in response to identification of an activation command identified as being specific to said electronic product.
According to the invention such an electronic device is characterized by means for receiving and identifying a deactivation code and communicating a control signal to said activation means in response to said deactivation code for disabling said activation means.
In a preferred embodiment the electronic device further comprises means for emission of a deactivation code generic to all of said number of electronic products in response to a control signal received from said activation means by identification of receipt of the activation command specific to the product, to which the electronic device is assigned.
Typically, the electronic device will be incorporated in any of the number of electronic products. It may also be designed, however, as an add-on unit, whereby a particular versatile structure is obtained providing users with the freedom of purchasing an electronic product as an individual speech controlled device, which can subsequently be upgraded for use according to the method of the invention by means of the add-on electronic device.